In this blog post I'm going to focus on just some financial regrets that I have experienced over the years, mostly in regard to the stock market.
One of my regrets was my lack of belief in the success of eBay. In July of 1998, eBay had less than 500,000 users and had yet to take the company public. I joined eBay that same month and remember reading in the Wall Street Journal about the company preparing to launch its IPO in September of 1998. The projected stock price was predicted to open at $18.00 but by the end of the first day the price was $53.50. If I had invested $1,000.00 in eBay today that investment would be worth over $18,000.
My first order on Amazon was in September 1997 (The Art of War). Amazon went public in May of that same year. You know what the stock price was for that IPO? $18.00. If I had invested $1,000.00 in Amazon in 1997 that would be worth over $495,000. Pretty unbelievable for a company that has yet to turn a profit.
Sigh.
I hate to even mention the professor at UTC in 1979 who was teaching my Basics 101 (Computer programming class). He mentioned that there was this company called Microsoft who was hoping that their Basic programming code would translate into software that people could use at their homes in the future. Which was really amusing considering that there was only two computers on the campus of UTC at that time, both of which ran DOS. The line got pretty long and people became pretty creative in their hopes of getting some face time in front of one of those two machines. No one I knew could possibly have envisioned a future where computers would be in every household. And yes, $1,000 invested in Microsoft in 1986 would be worth over $547,000 dollars today.
I did invest in Facebook when it went public ($38.00) and those shares lost over 50% in the first twelve months after the IPO. I sold the shares in August of 2013 after the share finally reached their original asking price. Share of FB now sell for over $150.00 @ share.
Quick summary - if you can invest and leave your investment alone (which requires that you have the liquid capital to spare . . .) than you can see how much money you can make if you invest in the right company. The trick is you can't expect to get in and out within a few months and make a healthy profit. (For instance, our FB investment required us to be able to leave the investment alone and we couldn't afford to have the money tied up for that amount of time)
In 2000 -2001 I invested over a half million dollars of stock trades. My end result of all of that day trading was a whopping $10,000 income. (A lot of hits and misses but the stress of playing with money I couldn't afford to lose became to much stress) I realize that for a lot of people the stock market is their social media platform. Conversations flow about their abilities to spot companies that are under valued, as well as understanding the cycles of profit that others couldn't grasp. But to really make money in short-term trading, (day trading) you have to be able to go against the grain, to sell when others are buying and visa versa. Day trading and being a Christian have something in common . . .
So do I have some regrets? My biggest regrets are in not recognizing the value of smart long-term investments. In investing in assets with a short shelf life versus real long term growth. In not investing when I had the means but not the knowledge as opposed to now that I have some knowledge but very little means. Those are the greatest financial regrets that I have. Now as for other regrets, that is a multi-post blog for another day.
